McDonald's Canada Shows You How to Make Special Sauce, How to Trust Again

McDonald's Canada has been on a transparency kick recently, posting casual-seeming videos with high-ranking members in the organization as answers to questions customers ask the hamburger behemoth on Twitter. And you know what? Sure, you can feel the smiles creak and hear the residue of marketing meetings in the scripts, but these videos are disarmingly charming.

In the video up top, for example, McDonald's Executive Chef Dan Coudreaut, the head honcho for the food side of the entire operation (and an ex-actor), does a little stand and stir segment showing how to make a Big Mac at home--including the Special Sauce. The guidance is solid and the burger looks good, but there's a telling moment of aw-shucks PR as Coudreaut takes off his chef jacket, saying "I'm gonna be a little less formal, and I'm gonna take off my uniform, and we're just gonna have some fun cooking." When he's talking about the food, Coudreaut seems like a confident chef. But for that one line, he looks like a furniture salesman's cousin, corralled into saying "wow!" at the price of a loveseat on a local TV ad.

The reality show vibe comes through even stronger on this video called "The McNugget Under the Microscope." The camera work is handheld, the audio's a little noisy, and the on-camera flack is good at seeming curious, but the "be natural" vibe feels forced. It does reveal that there are no remnants of bones in McNuggets, though, which was kind of a given?

The videos are being made by McDonald's Canada, but one can't help but wonder if this is part of a larger campaign meant to drift through the Internet towards the American market. It doesn't seem like a stretch to say that, to American viewers, Canadians seem inherently trustworthy and pleasant, divorced from our bitter political lives. [McDonald's Canada via Gawker]